Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters with Comets

By Mike Baillie

Book Overview

This account argues that the Earth has undergone several catastrophic encounters with comets and their debris in the last five millennia, with mythology preserving the story better than history.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0713486813
• ISBN13: 9780713486810
• Release Date: June 2003
• Publisher: Batsford
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Trees Remember

Comets, asteroids, fireballs, stones fall from the ancient skies, and plagues have generated a great impact on people's mind and writings since the beginning of time. Stories of towns and cities being destroyed, myths of the battles of the gods in the sky, and the legends of the great Flood. What if they were describing the real events of destruction in the ancient times? Mike Baillie is a scientist of dendrochronology and an authority on the tree-ring records which brings to light of new evidences on what happened in the past. In the first part of the book, he discussed what dendrochronology is, and he helps the reader on an understanding of the tree-ring records as well the ice cores. From studying the tree-ring records, the author discovered the disturbing patterns to which seems to tell a story of the events that were considered to be myths or legends. In this book, the author pointed out that the tree-ring records revealed the global environmental disturbances on specific time periods, such as 2354-2345 BC, 1628-1623 BC, 1159-1141 BC, 208-204 BC, and AD 536-545. These periods also known to coincide with the times of the Biblical flood, the Exodus event, plagues during King David's reign and the Ch'in dynasty, and the death of legendary King Arthur. And, the author goes further to discuss that there were number of cometary impacts, similar to the Tunguska event of 1908, that caused great environmental disasters including earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, and outgassing from ocean floor. These disasters were recorded by the trees. A 270-page work, Exodus to Arthur would considered to be an outrage and controversial because it almost can be read as a "catastrophe theory." However, this book gave strong evidence to support the fact that there were cometary impacts in the historical times, and they were evidently recorded in tree growth rings and written down through the ages as myth or legends. It also aimed toward the general audience instead of scientists, and it is not written in a technical style. Personally, I have enjoyed reading Baillie's book as it gave me a strong understanding of how important to know what really happened in our past, and how it would affect our future. Along with this book, I would recommend other works to support the fact of cometary impacts, including Mike Baillie's recent work: New Light on the Black Death, Victor Clube's The Cosmic Serpent (ISBN: 057111816X) and "Cosmic Winter," and Firestone's The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture. This book also support the fact that trees really do remembered and have a great deal of stories to tell.

Science and Mythology

The author is a scientist who first lays out the scientific proof of major environmental events during the past 5,000 years using dendrochronology records (his expertise) compiled from around the world and ice cores from Greenland. After marshalling the evidence to establish the 'effects' he then goes on to speculate about the 'causes', looking at various sources such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and other tectonic events such as outgassing, finally moving on to near cometary misses and the associated debris as potential culprits.Throughout the book, the author ties real science to his reading of historical and mythological texts to present a compelling case; a case which he continously subjects to scientific and logical scrutiny, pointing out the strengths as well as the weaknesses of the case. The book has 8 appendices which are as interesting as the book itself and an excellent bibliography. I can very highly recommend this book based on the scientific content and methodology of his analyses. This is no loopy guy with a loopier theory. The author approaches the subject in exactly the way such past (and indisputable) environmental events should be analysed vis-a-vis their potential effects on human history, including discussion of why these events may have been historically recorded yet are now overlooked by 'modern' researchers.This book should put the subject, often pejoratively labled as 'catastrophism', back on the scientific and rational table where it belongs.

Don't judge this book by its cover!!!

This book contains incredibly important, scientific observations and conclusions, about the past few thousand years of Earth's history. Unfortunately, the publishers seem to have adorned this brilliant work of science with one of the silliest book jackets I've ever seen in my life. Let me just say right now that I have communicated with the author about this, and the book jacket was NOT his choice.The author, Mike Baillie, is a highly respected professor of palaeoecology at Queen's University Belfast, in Northern Ireland. More than anyone else, he has pioneered the study of "dendrochronology," which is the study of ancient tree rings, and how widely spaced they are in a given year, to infer climate and weather conditions for the years being studied. Basically, the technique is perfectly logical. In a year with terrible weather, trees grow less. Makes sense, right? Well, indeed, this is always the case, and it is possible to see tiny discrepancies in tree growth from year to year, even today. Now, what would you think if you noticed that, at some time in the distant past, trees seem to have gone several years in a row with hardly any growth at all? Scary, eh? What would this mean to you? Well, if you think it over for long enough, you should conclude that SOMETHING was probably blotting out the sun's life-giving rays to such a great extent that trees simply could not grow. If trees could not grow well, it follows that agriculture probably suffered as well. And if agriculture suffered badly enough, there might even be records of actual civilizations crumbling and vanishing.Professor Baillie has isolated five such periods, in our relatively recent past. These periods took place in 2354-2345 B.C., 1628-1623 B.C., 1159-1141 B.C., 208-204 B.C., and A.D. 536-545. For each of these periods, he has sought to locate historical records, or at least old legends, which might provide some evidence of terrible times for mankind. Sure enough, he always seems to come through with something or other. My favorite part is the A.D. 536-545 period, for which he has made a faily plausible case of being connected to the old legends of king Arthur's Wasteland. Usually quite a bit of detective work is required here, but more often than not he can make a strong case for something having happened to our climate, at irregular intervals of a few centuries.The title makes plain what he has concluded to be the likely culprits -- comets and asteroids, and possibly an occasional volcano. Current astronomical theory, in fact, actually does hold that statistically, we really should expect to have been hit a few times since the dawn of civilization. Not by anything as bad as the monster asteroid that immolated the dinosaurs -- we would certainly remember that! But even much more moderate-sized asteroids could reasonably be expected to cause significant, widespread social disruption.I would like to point out, to whoever is reading this, that TWO of professor Bai

Six climate changes in the last 6000 years in tree rings.

This book reads like a detective story where the plot slowly unfolds. In the beginning it describes the use of tree rings to date old wood in buildings, paintings, ships and other archeological specimens. By a huge collaborative effort by many tree ring scientists it has been possible to establish almost continuous tree ring patterns over 6000 years in bristlecone pine, oak, and other species. Most variations in ring width is due to local conditions. However, six peculiar worldwide, decade long episodes of reduced growth has become evident, for example around 1628 BC and 540 AD. The archeologist Baillie compares this with chinese, egyptian and other history, with the bible and with myths from all over the world, and with what is known of climate changes, vulcano eruptions, analyses of Greenland ice cores and the probability of impacts of comets and asteroids. The 1628 BC event may or may not be explained by the Santorini explosion, and perhaps it caused the 10 plagues of Egypt and the exodus. The 540 AD event coincided with plagues in Constantinople, "dry fog", very pale sun and famine and with the myths of king Arthur. What caused this to happen? Baillie examines the various lines of evidence and ends up with collisions with comets and asteroids as the most likely explanation. Will it happen again and what should we do? Stock up on food like in Egypt under Moses before exodus or hit the comets with nuclear weapons?